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A South American tribe living in near total isolation and without Western dietary influences has shown no increase in average blood pressure from 1 to 60 years, according to a study conducted by health school researchers public John Hopkins Bloomberg. In comparison, a neighboring tribe, whose diet includes processed foods and salt, showed elevated blood pressure until late in the middle age.
In the United States and most countries, blood pressure rises with age and begins early in life. The results of this study support the idea that the trend of blood pressure in Westernized societies to increase with age is not a natural part of aging, but may result from a cumulative effect of dietary exposure and to the Western way of life.
The results appear on November 14 in the newspaper JAMA Cardiology.
"The idea that rising blood pressure is the result of aging is a common belief in cardiology, but our findings add to the evidence that rising blood pressure may be an avoidable consequence of diet and Western lifestyle rather than aging itself, "Noel Mueller said. PhD, MPH, assistant professor of epidemiology at the Bloomberg School and member of the Welch Center for Prevention, Epidemiology and Clinical Research.
For their study, the researchers took blood pressure measurements of 72 Yanomami aged 1 to 60 years and found no upward or downward trend in the extent to which the participants were aging. The researchers also measured the blood pressure of 83 members of the neighboring Yekwana tribe, who were more exposed to Western influences, including food, and found a clear upward trend in pressure with aging.
The Yanomami live as hunter-gatherers and gardeners in a remote rainforest region of northern Brazil and southern Venezuela. Their diet is low in fat and salt and rich in fruits and fiber. Studies of adult Yanomami since the 1980s have shown that atherosclerosis and obesity were virtually unknown at home and that they exhibited extremely low blood pressure on average, with no apparent increase with the disease. 39; age.
The new study reveals that age-related Yanomami blood pressure stability begins in early childhood. He is the first to compare the Yanomami to a geographically identical population, the Yekwana, exposed differently to the Western diet and other influences of the Western way of life.
The researchers, examining members of Yanomami villages in southern Venezuela, found that their blood pressure measurements averaged 95 (mm Hg) systolic on 63 diastolic patients. (In American adults, the systolic average is 122 and the diastolic 71.) This low figure in the Yanomami is consistent with previous studies on Yanomami adults, but the researchers also measured roughly the same blood pressure in the Yanomami children. In fact, the data suggest that blood pressure in this population remains close to the same low level between age 1 and at least 60 years, with no upward or downward trend.
In contrast to the Yanomami, Yekwana have been exposed to certain aspects of the western way of life and diet, including processed foods, through their interactions and trade with the industrialized world. While the blood pressure readings at the youngest ages were almost the same as those of their Yanomami peers, there was a clear upward trend in levels with age, about 0.25 mm Hg per year, so the Yekwana had average levels of 5.8 mm. Hg greater than 10 years and 15.9 mm Hg greater than 50 years.
"This increase in age-related blood pressure begins in early childhood – suggesting that early childhood can be a" window of opportunity "for lifestyle interventions to prevent subsequent increases in blood pressure, "said Mueller.
To put these findings in context, in the United States, systolic blood pressure increases by approximately 1.5 mm Hg and 1.9 mm Hg per year in boys and girls, respectively, and by 0.6 mm Hg per year. year in adults.
Mueller and his colleagues plan to continue with a study of the intestinal bacteria of the Yanomami and Yekwana to determine if the intestinal microbiome accounts for differences in blood pressure of both tribes with aging.
Funding was provided by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (K01HL141589), the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the C & D Fund and the Emch Fund for Microbial Diversity.
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